Saturday, September 15, 2012

Crystal Ball 2 (Rainout Boogaloo), or How a Rainout Could Have Saved a Season

We can help each other.

Can we find a way? We can find a way.

Wiley,
“Electric Boogaloo”

Lonely at the Top: It's not too early to say the season is in Liriano's shaky hands.

[Note at 3:33 p.m. after a sublimely dominating Francisco Liriano win over the Twinkies: Never has it been so sweet to be revealed as a ninnied hand-wringer. If the White Sox's 4-5-6 starters Jose Quintana, Liriano, and Hector Santiago can stay in the groove of their last starts, it will take every bit of the dominating finish I foresee from the Tigers to hold off the Pale Hose. For now, you have to splash a sunny tint over the dour forecast that follows below.]To wit, with 19 games remainingIn advance of the latest Series of the Season vs. the Detroit
Tigers, I took a look ahead at how September would play out for the Chicago
White Sox. As promised then: It wouldn’t end well.

But then, the Lord has provided durable
evidence that indeed He believes good guys wear black.

With a washout on Thursday, the White Sox avoided what was almost
certain to be a third consecutive free-fall out of sole possession of first
place at the direct manhandle of the Detroit Tigers. The insipid return to
April weather allowed the White Sox to avoid their executioner, Justin
Verlander. The showers provided a pause for a club in dire need of a breath—as
well as an excuse not to start Francisco Liriano in a game, ever again.

Except…

I wrote the above paragraph before it was announced that Robin
Ventura was going to eschew the solid Gavin Floyd vs. Tigers matchup in the
Monday makeup, give Jose Quintana a day of extra rest (hey, why ride him while
he’s temporarily re-found his Rookie of the Year stuff?) and pitch—eek—Liriano on Saturday night at Target Field.

Liriano is much too scattershot at this moment to be pitching in a
crucial game—yes, all 19 games remaining are crucial “playoff” games—and yet
here he is, pitching Game 133, turning a likely victorious outcome behind Quintana into a tossup. Now, instead
of a Minny sweep, I see a mere series win. With Detroit devouring its remaining
schedule, that is foolhardy confidence on the part of Sox brass.

At a time when Robin should be finding reasons for Chris Sale or
Jake Peavy to get an extra turn on short rest in order to remain ahead of
Detroit, he’s essentially giving a game away in an attainable, necessary sweep.
Woe is the White Sox.

Crystal ball

I’d originally revised the remaining season figuring on regular
rest for the rotation of Peavy, Quintana, Floyd, Sale and Hector Santiago.
Santiago should earn the fifth starter’s spot in spite of an inability to go more
than, say, six innings in a start. Why? How about basing it on the fact that
he’s been, like, unhittable in his two career starts (nine innings, six hits,
six walks, one earned run, 14 strikeouts), with game scores of 60 and 61.

Screwy: Santiago should start any fifth-spot game to come.

Liriano over the same previous two starts? Nine innings, 10 hits,
11 walks, eight earned runs, nine strikeouts, with game scores of 40 and 35.

This giveaway game (I’m generously considering that Robin will realize the mistake of starting Liriano for the White Sox ever again and attributing
the three future starts in the stretch run to Santiago) becomes the difference
between trailing by a single game at the end of the season (making the Tigers
catchable in the season’s final week) and two games (uncatchable without a
massive 2008-everybody-wang-short-rest-tonight scenario).

Instead of using Thursday’s rainout to aggressively reshuffle the
rotation and keep the pedal to the metal enough to stay within a game of
Detroit, the season now plays out the same: Detroit takes the division at 89-73, with the White Sox two back,
at 87-75.

Many of the same facts apply now, five days after my first crack
at this. The White Sox have a fairly easy road the rest of the way—as do the
Tigers.

The home/away advantage now actually does tilt in Detroit’s favor,
with the Tigers getting 10 home games of the final 19, the White Sox eight.

Discounting the Detroit makeup, the White Sox play against two
clubs (seven games) who are better than .500 and in the heat of the playoff
race, the Tigers just one (three games, a home set vs. Oakland).

The White Sox are 36-32 against their opponents the rest of the
way (including 5-12 vs. Detroit and 5-10 vs. K.C.), while the Tigers have gone 40-30
vs. their foes (under .500 against only Cleveland, at 7-9). So Detroit has an
even easier trip into October than
the White Sox.

The proper strategy

I made the point five games ago that the White Sox rotation is out
of gas and tattered. That remains true. But if anything, that’s an excuse to
push Peavy or Sale—perhaps even Floyd—out a day early at some point in the
stretch run. (Of course, in a stretch run that involves trotting Liriano back
out to the mound on September 15, don’t bother.)

The best chance Robin has to catch Detroit—because the division
lead will be done for good as soon as Monday—is to push his best starters a bit.

I am not proposing a four-man rotation in the season’s last two
weeks. But if Robin had skipped this Liriano start tonight by keeping his
reliable four starters on regular rest, that alone would have added a win to
the ledger.

Then, with Peavy being the best and perhaps only candidate to be run out on short rest, we could have seem him take a future Quintana start in the
K.C. finale on September 20 or the Tampa finale on September 30. Q would still get his extra rest, and one of the more doomed Liriano/Santiago starts could be eliminated entirely.

These two simple but aggressive steps would both end the season in a tie with Detroit and re-set
the rotation so that Sale is starting in the season finale vs. Cleveland. I
already have the White Sox winning that game (perhaps improbably, although
let’s nod to 2005 in predicting a season finale sweep vs. the Wahoos), but tell
me, you feel better starting Sale there, or Floyd?

In the tiebreaker, then, you ask Peavy to come back again on short
rest, with Floyd/Santiago/Liriano/Septimo/Marinez/Barojas/James/Thigpen all
ready in case there’s a need to shatter glass to win the division.

The dirty details

Detroit shows cracks, largely with a defense that the whole of the
Netherlands couldn’t plug. But where it really counts, the starting rotation,
the Bengals have an advantage. The Tigs boast a Big 3 in the rotation (Verlander, Doug Fister, Max Scherzer) and even the back end is more stable than
Chicago’s, with Anibal Sanchez and Rick Porcello.

If we generously call the bullpens a wash (seems there’s more
stability at the moment in Motown), Detroit’s offensive advantage can be cancelled
out by the White Sox’s defensive one. So it will come down to the rotations.

With Robin giving away the rainout advantage, I see the two teams
tied for the last time on Monday, before the Tigers go out and, for the third
time this season, take a division lead from Chicago by beating it head-to-head.

I’m giving gold stars to Sale, Peavy, Fister and Verlander for
going undefeated the rest of the way. Here’s how the games will break down per
pitcher:

Detroit still will end up coming in and taking three of four from
the White Sox, albeit in delayed fashion. But because of Chicago’s inability to
properly take advantage of those Thursday raindrops by starting Liriano on Saturday, Detroit
will leave town two days later in first place and will never look back.

Attacking series with a sense of "desperation" (yeah, with all of a one-game lead in the division) would
have struck former manager Ozzie Guillen as symptomatic of the typical zeal of
an out-of-touch analyst. Ventura at least regards such expert onlookers with,
if not more respect, less expletives.

But in the end, it’s the same. If treating the remaining 19 games
as one-game playoffs seems too stressful on the White Sox, they can take up
golf. Pinning the meter, especially given a disadvantageous scenario vs. Detroit, is the
only way to preserve what has been glorious surprise of a season.

It’s a shame the Sox are approaching it fat and sassy as opposed to having any sense of what lies ahead. Such laxity will cost them the division.

About Poetry in Pros

Brett most recently logged a couple of beats at CSNChicago, first following the Blackhawks and covering their first Stanley Cup win in 49 years, then shifting to the South Side and the White Sox.

His sportswriting career began right before the turn of the century, first as an editor for Basketball News and later editing Basketball Digest and Bowling Digest. He has written for Baseball Digest and MLB Trade Rumors, as well as the Chicago White Sox and MLB World Series programs, as well as Slam, Hoop, Inside Stuff, Courtside, Rinkside, and numerous NBA game programs. He has been featured in ESPN the Magazine, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Baltimore Sun and Crain's Chicago Business, and on Comcast Sports Net, NBA-TV, NHL.com, MLB.com, WLS-TV, WGN-TV and the BBC. He's also written features for the NBA Finals and NBA All-Star Game programs.

Brett is the author of the essential baseball reference work 'The Wit and Wisdom of Ozzie Guillen.' When Ozzie first saw the book, on Opening Night 2006, he cracked wise to those in his manager's office, asking, "What's wisdom?" To which owner Jerry Reinsdorf replied, "Don't worry, Ozzie. You don't have any."

A lifelong Chicago sports fan, the first game Brett attended was on Dec. 4, 1976, watching the Bulls snap a (still) franchise-record 13-game losing streak and setting in motion the playoff run that would come to be defined as the Miracle on Madison. At Brett's first White Sox game on June 4, 1977, Richie Zisk of the South Side Hit Men homered over the roof at Comiskey Park at a time when the feat was as rare as a no-hitter. Brett's first Chicago Bears game was on Oct. 7, 1984, when Walter Payton broke the all-time NFL career rushing mark.

More than anything, however, Brett is a baseball and a White Sox fan, having seen hundreds of games over his lifetime, including a walk-off grand slam by Carlos Lee to defeat the Cubbies, the infamous Michael Barrett sucker-punch on A.J. Pierzynski, a then-season record home run by Oscar Gamble in 1977, Bobby Thigpen's 50th season save in 1990, and the classic Blackout tiebreaker win over the Twins in 2008. There have been many pilgrimages to see the team, including a September 1990 drive up from Texas to see a final series at Comiskey Park, an April 1991 flight to watch the otherwise-unmentionable first game at the then-New Comiskey Park, outrunning a snowstorm to see the White Sox be whitewashed in a late September game at Kauffman Stadium, and a jaunt down to the Hovering Sombrero in 2005 to catch the club take on the Tampa Bay Rays.

His highlight as a fan is, of course, witnessing the entire home run of 2005 White Sox playoff victories, including the two extraordinary wins over the Houston Astros at USCF that spurred a World Series sweep. More recently, he took in Mark Buehrle's perfect game in 2009, during which Brett made the boldest prediction imaginable—not of an eventual perfect game, but a Josh Fields grand slam! Brett has watched games in every major league city.

Brett graduated from Texas Christian University with a Journalism and English degree and came thisclose to finishing his English master's at Kansas State University while teaching composition to disinterested agribusiness majors. He's won a number of writing awards in areas as varied as poetry, fiction, features, news reporting and opinion writing. Brett lives in Florida with his incomparable wife, Angelique.

Poetry in Pros Trivia

Now that you know a little bit about Poetry in Pros writer Brett Ballantini, see how you score below. True or false, Brett:

Believes that the ABA saved professional basketball.

Borrowed the title of the first draft of his master's thesis from a Camper Van Beethoven song.

Co-founded and played in a band called Ethnocentric Republicans, who once shared a bill with 15-minutes-of-fame grunge rockers The Toadies.

Considers nachos piled high with jalapenos as his go-to concession food.

Gave a Crunch bar to then-Nestle spokesman Shaquille O'Neal before their first interview together in Milwaukee. Later saw an empty Crunch bar wrapper in Shaq's locker.

Gave three photographs from his personal collection to the Chicago Bulls for their "walk of fame" leading to the locker room at the United Center.

Had four front teeth.

Has appeared in one movie, in which he was murdered when Albert Einstein slammed his head in a door.

Has appeared on the cover of a magazine with a circulation of 100,000. As Santa Claus. Bowling.

Has attended just three games in Wrigley Field as a fan. One was to see the Chicago Sting.

Has been a vegetarian for 30 years.

Has been doused by Bill Veeck's outfield shower in two different decades, in two different White Sox parks.

Hasn't cried over a game since Tito Landrum crushed that homer off of Britt Burns in October 1983.

Has worked for at least seven publications that are no longer in business.

Kissed the Minnie Minoso statue in the outfield concourse at Sox Park on the cheek as a good-luck gesture before Game 1 of the 2005 World Series.

Caught a foul ball while covering a preseason game from the roof of Tempe Diablo Stadium. On his birthday.

To Wit:

"When I build a fire under a person, I do not do it merely because of the enjoyment I get out of seeing him fry, but because he is worth the trouble. It is then a compliment, a distinction; let him give thanks and keep quiet. I do not fry the small, the commonplace, the unworthy."